There is a known mail system which notifies a system administrator (hereinafter, simply referred to as administrator) of a failure via an email (hereinafter, simply referred to as mail) if the failure occurs in a Web service system.
Such mail systems include a system which sets a different administrator as a destination of a mail depending on a failure state (for example, refer to Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2002-236576).
FIG. 17 illustrates an outline of a Web service system in related art.
A Web service system 90 illustrated in FIG. 17 manages a correspondence between failure details and administrators by using a destination table 92 stored in a management server 91. If a failure occurs, the management server 91 consults the destination table 92 to distribute an alert mail via a mail server 93 and the Internet 80. Referring to FIG. 17, the destination table 92 specifies administrators A to D who are to be informed if a hardware failure or a software failure occurs in any of Web servers 94, application (AP) servers 95, and database (DB) servers 96 which are managed by the management server 91. The administrators to be informed can be changed by updating the destination table 92, which is stored in the management server 91. In general, this update is performed by the administrator of the management server 91.
In recent years, a system to be managed has become more complicated. Therefore, interactions between hardware and middleware components or between middleware components are more likely to cause a failure. Therefore, if such a failure occurs, it is necessary to inform not only administrators who are directly related to the failure (administrators set in the destination table) but also administrators who are possibly related to it.
If a conventional mail notification technique is adapted to handle such a failure, an alert mail is sent to all of possibly related administrators including actually unrelated administrators, which significantly increases the amount of mails to be sent to the administrators. In addition, as the administrators may receive many alert mails with their own personal computers (PCs), they need to depend on a mailer function to select and extract relevant mails from many incoming mails.
With popularization of mail communications with portable telephone services, services of sending alert mails to portable telephones are more used. The portable telephones are provided with an incoming call notification function such as ringing, lightening, vibrating, so that they will be made good use of as communication terminals for 24-hour system management or fast troubleshooting.
However, if the above-described technique is adapted by using the portable telephone services, alert mails are also sent to administrators who are not directly related to failures, which causes important alert mails to be mixed with many other mails. This may be because the mailers of the portable telephones have a simpler reception function than those of personal computers, and therefore their mail browsing functions and operability may not be satisfactory. Especially, if an incoming call notification is made for every failure (notification requirement), the administrator may have a lack of concern for alert mails, which results in a delay of troubleshooting.